Of all things, the New Testament begins with a long list of people, a genealogy of Jesus. In the ancient world, as in our own, when you have a genealogy, you are often telling something about the person. When you consider the women who are highlighted in Matthew 1, you see just how deep and wide the scandalous mercy of God is. This second week of Advent we are looking at the second woman mentioned in Matthew 1, Rahab. The story of Rahab is found in Joshua 2, in the beginning of the story of the Canaanite conquest and the fall of Jericho. Rahab, a prostitute is the woman of faith and faithful works (as Hebrews 11 and James 2 tell us) and God spares her. She is a great lesson of the great mercy of God for all who turn to him.

Transcript

Lord in heaven, we pray as we meditate on Rahab and the conquest there in Canaan today, this morning, that your mercy for us might loom over our lives. Even in the context of a story of divine judgment, we might see your scarlet thread, your blood shed for us as the key to life. Teach us Lord.

Now may the words in my mouth, the meditations and the thoughts, the things that we contemplate, desire be pleasing to your side, oh Lord, our rock and our redeemer. Amen. All right, I'm going to start this morning with a song for you.

You're a mean one. You really are a heel. You're as cuddly as a cactus.

You're as charming as an eel. You're a bad banana with a greasy black peel. I'm gonna keep going.

You're a monster. Your heart's an empty hole. Your brain is full of spiders.

You've got garlic in your soul. I wouldn't touch you with a 39 and a half foot pole. Now you're probably thinking, right, why did he not say Mr. Grinch? You are all wondering that, but I left it out because I wanted to make a point, and that is this, that many people, rather than singing Mr. Grinch, would sing it like this.

You're a mean one, Old Testament God. Right? Listen to how Richard Dawkins, the famous atheist in evolutionary biology says it. The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction.

Jealous and proud of it, a petty, unjust, unforgiving, control freak, a vindictive, bloodthirsty, ethnic, cleanser, misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniac, sadomasochistic, capricious, malevolent bully. And then Matthew begins the entirety of the New Testament, his gospel, which means good news. By setting up Jesus, setting us up to understand Jesus as in the line of the story of the Old Testament with Israel and its God and all of that.

You know, so this Advent, we're looking more intently in this genealogy at the family line, the Old Testament narratives as through these women, these four women that are mentioned there in Matthew chapter one. There's really a fifth woman, right? But we're going to get to her Christmas Eve evening, Blessed Mary. And I mentioned last week that that women wouldn't really be included in an ancient genealogy.

And if they were, in the event that they were, it would have been really for the express purpose of showing just how pure and sort of perfect this family line is. How wonderful your family history is. So if you're creating your naughty and your nice list, right? You're going to include the people in your genealogy that fit the nice list.

You are not going to include Uncle Frank from Home Alone in your genealogy, right? You are not going to include Cousin Eddie, are you? No, they're not making it. And yet, Matthew does this crazy thing. And he includes in really what is very possibly the most scandalous stories in the Old Testament.

They are unquestionably, though the women actually, when you focus on the women, they are remarkable characters. But the narratives that they draw us back to are some of the most difficult stories in the whole Old Testament. So last week, right, we talked about Tamar.

 

We looked at Tamar from Genesis chapter 38. She's one of the mothers of Jesus. And we talked about actually how remarkable she really is, how she risks.

And the risk that she risks is rather scandalous. But in that risk and in that giving up in a way, she is actually used by God for the repentance of Judah. And we saw how really you can see that she is a mother of the Lord and how our Lord Jesus in some ways takes on some of that character.

God, with Son, gives up the glories of heaven, risks in a way, the greatest thing ever, he gives up his life. And in so doing brings the repentance and faith and redemption. But no doubt some of you had some harder conversations around your lunch tables last Sunday.

It is easily one of the hardest stories of Scripture. So it's a crazy family story. And tonight we continue on with it.

I'm going to read a little bit again of what was just read for us from the gospel. Okay. So picking up where Judah and Tamar verse three of Genesis, or sorry, Matthew chapter one, Judah, the father of Perez and Zerah by Tamar, Perez the father of Hezron, Hezron the father of Ram, Ram the father of Amminadab, Amminadab the father of Nashon, Nashon the father of Salmon, Salmon the father of Boaz by Rahab.

Okay. So Rahab is the story and the person that we're going to consider this morning. Let me say this too.

This is going to be a little bit of a different sermon. It's kind of like last week's was where I kind of read some of the texts and spoke about it. I'm not going to focus as much on the text that we just have, but I wanted you to have it before you.

And instead on the event that is taking place in the life of Israel and in Rahab's story. So I don't know how familiar you are, familiar you are necessarily with the story of Rahab that we just heard it. And I don't know if you're terribly familiar of where it sits in the narrative of God and Israel and Holy scripture.

And so what I'm going to do is I'm going to tell you a little bit about that sort of leading up to it. Okay. Leading up to what we heard from Joshua chapter two.

So the nation of Israel begins with Abraham, right? I mean, that's where Matthew also begins. If you go to Luke's genealogy, he begins with Adam, but Matthew begins with Abraham and he wants to draw our attention to the story of Israel. And Abraham begins that story.

God calls Abraham to himself out from the city of Ur. And then he blesses Abraham and he says, I'm going to bless you. I'm going to make you into a great nation.

I'm going to give you a land. And he gives them these promises. And the promises at the time seem actually pretty crazy because Abraham's already kind of older and he has no children and he's married to Sarah and she's barren.

She doesn't have any children and there are nomads. They don't have any land. So the promises that God's going to give them these things at the time seem a little absurd.

And in some ways you follow the book of Genesis and God is making good, at least initially on that first promise of making them into a nation. Now they're not a nation at that end of Genesis, but they're beginning to be. God miraculously allows Sarah to bear a child, right? Isaac and Isaac then has Jacob and you begin to see this happening.

But then Exodus begins, the second book in the Old Testament begins and we start to see that this nation is becoming something of a nation, but what we find is that they're in slavery. Not only do they not have their own land, they aren't even nomads anymore. They are under somebody else in a totally different land.

 Exodus kind of tells us this story, of course, of God's redemption and bringing them out from slavery, but also part of the story is that he's bringing them to the land that he's promised them, right? So God is making good again on his promises. The third book of the Bible, the book of Leviticus, tells how God sets them apart. He calls them to be holy as he is holy in their worship and in their life together and all of that.

The fourth book, Numbers, kind of tells more about their wilderness wanderings. The book Deuteronomy, literally that just means second law. That's the second giving of the law and it's right before the book of Joshua because it's right before they enter the promised land.

So that kind of brings us up to the book of Joshua, where the story of Rahab happens and that's what Rebecca read for us and I hope you're able to follow along with that. Here's what's happening in the book of Joshua. The book of Joshua is full of Israel finally enter into this promised land that God has given them and they take over the promised land and really many, many, many of the Canaanites are killed.

They are absolutely killed and God tells them to do this, okay? Now that is why for many, many people, this is one of the hardest narratives of Holy Scripture, the Canaanite conquest. And let me say this too actually, in my own life and in my own study of Scripture, this idea has been one of the harder things. And if you've been a student of Scripture and a student of God's ways, I think you ought to be wrestling with this idea that on some level this happened and God desired it.

Desired actually is, maybe that's not the right word, God commanded at least. Let me say it this way. Genesis 38 is probably one of the hardest chapters to have conversations with your children about.

Can I get an amen? Some of you knew that. The Canaanite conquest is probably one of the hardest stories to have conversations with your neighbors about, okay? Because of this, God instructed Israel to go into the land of Canaan and wipe out the people there and possess their land. Let me just read that again and I want you to sit in this, okay? God instructed Israel to go into the land of Canaan and wipe out the people and possess their land.

If that doesn't sit a little bit uneasy with you, you probably didn't hear me well. Let me read it again. God instructed Israel to go into the land of Canaan and wipe out the people and possess their land.

So in some ways what I want to do this morning is just say, what do we do with that? But then specifically, what does Rahab have to do with that? It's a very, very important thing. What you could do with that is say, as so many people have, God goes on the naughty list you know, put them up on the naughty list. But the question I think that we have to wrestle because Rahab is mentioned right here and there's an attention drawn to this dynamic of the Canaanite conquest is mentioned, this is mentioned right in the genealogy of Jesus.

So when you start to engage with Jesus, Matthew is still saying, hey, remember these stories? How does this comport with the stories of Christ? I think Matthew is telling us very, in fact, I think it's rather clear that you don't really understand Jesus unless you understand these Old Testament narratives. So what do we make of this whole thing? We are disturbed. I think most of us would say we are disturbed at times with the violence of the Old Testament.

And at least my guess is at least if you've begun to think about it, you're disturbed with the ways that the violence of the Bible has sometimes been imported by the Christian church. Of course, we can think of things like the crusades on the Muslims. We can think of the genocide that took place in the name of American Manifest Destiny by many Native Americans, oftentimes in association with Christians and the church.

You can think actually the same story happens with Australian Aboriginals. You can think of apartheid in South Africa. You can think of all kinds of stories right now that are done in the name of Christianity.

You can think of language that's used by Christians against people that they just don't like, right? Violent language. So what do we do with all this? What do we do specifically with Canaanite conquest? Because that's really often at the heart of so many of these conversations. Let me do this.

Okay. Again, I said this is a different kind of sermon, but let me give you three options I think that don't work. All right.

One option that we could do is just pretend it's not there. Do you know sometimes Christians like to do this? They just like to be like, I can't hear you. I don't want to engage with that.

It makes me too uncomfortable. That doesn't work. This is in Holy Scripture.

Okay. Option two, we could say that's just a problem for the Old Testament. Let's leave it there.

The New Testament gives us a better approach. Let's be red letter Christians. Jesus shows that God is actually love.

I don't think this works at all. Okay. Let me tell you why.

First, the Old Testament presents God as the God of love. And actually the New Testament talks equally as much about judgment. It's kind of tricky.

Let me give you a few examples. Exodus 34, it says, That's how God says, this is how you have to understand me. Right? Jeremiah 31, unfailing kindness.

Or this, The Bible presents us with a God who is love. And the flip side of that actually is that the New Testament talks a lot about judgment. And I know some people want to say, oh, that's Paul.

It's actually not. 11 of the 12 times in the New Testament that eternal punishment is mentioned, or the ideas of eternal punishment, the unquenchable fire are out of the mouth of Jesus. So if you want to be a red letter Christian, it doesn't really work.

I mean, you can't actually make sense of this conundrum. But listen to Hebrews chapter 10 too. This gives you a sense of how you can't just be a New Testament Christian.

He was chapter 10, 28 says, He says it's actually worse now that God's revealed himself more in Jesus. So I don't think option two works, okay? Now option three, maybe some of you have heard this, this probably isn't as popular, but it's out there in more of an academic setting, and that is this, that the Israelites were just sort of mistaken in their zeal. They didn't actually listen to what God said. They thought he was telling them that, and he wasn't saying that.

Now let me say this, there are times in the Bible where God does correct what Israel does. They say, ah, you weren't doing that, and he never mentions that with regards to this. In fact, he does the exact opposite.

He actually says you didn't go far enough. That's part of the problem. You didn't take over the whole land.

Now David's still dealing with the Philistines, stuff like that. Okay, option four, maybe some of you have heard this one, and that is that this whole Canaanite conquest is just mere allegory. None of it actually happened.

It's there to teach us a lesson about God's victory over enemies. Again, the text itself does not invite this kind of reading. You're not a good student of the text if you're going to take it that way, okay? The text does not invite that.

So here's the thing, some of these are going to be appealing to you, these options, but I'm suggesting that they actually don't, they don't work. At least if you take the text seriously, and if you take what God says of himself seriously, these don't get us out of this. What do we do? Before I kind of get into like, I think, the better ways to understand this, let me say this.

This is one of the things, and I think along with what's known as the problem of evil, that though there can be some better explanations, it's rarely emotionally satisfying. So my guess is that you will live your life, and I will live my life, not totally emotionally satisfied with the answer of what did we do with the Canaanite conquest, okay? So let me give you a few things to keep in mind. First, you have to keep in mind the ancient context in which this was written.

It was literary convention at the time to talk about things like annihilating people when you're not actually killing everyone. I mean, we know that just from the mere fact of Rahab, right? Like Rahab was sick, okay? But Jericho's still told to be like, annihilated. So that is, you know, like you have to understand some literary convention that's going on in this, and this is important, okay? Literary convention, this is not the same as falsehood, right? Saying that like, people were annihilated, it's not, it's not a lie, it's a literary convention, okay? That's important, this difference.

The second thing that you have to understand when taking this, when approaching this idea of Canaanite conquest, is that this is God's war, this is not holy war, right? This is not people doing it, this is God saying this must happen, and it's God saying I must bring about judgment. And this is why it's actually so important that Jericho, the story of Jericho, takes place at the beginning of God's people coming into Canaan and doing what they did there, because the people do nothing actually. All they do is walk around the city and blow trumpets, and God does it.

God does it, okay? That's a very important thing to keep in mind, especially when you are tempted to take up arms yourself or something. The other thing that's important, and this is sort of related to that, is that Israel is not righteous, okay? Listen, listen to these words, these are from Deuteronomy chapter 9. It says, do not say in your heart after the Lord your God has thrust them out before you, so he's talking specifically about the Canaanite conquest. It's because of my righteousness that the Lord brought me into the land.

It says, whereas it is because of the wickedness of these nations that the Lord is driving them out before you. Not because of your righteousness or your uprightness of heart are you going to possess their land, but because of the wickedness of these nations, the Lord your God is driving them out from before you, that he may confirm the word that he swore to your father, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob. And get this, God actually says that he might do the same to Israel, and he actually does it.

You have to understand like the exile from the Assyrians, the exile from the Babylonians, that's actually God making good on the same promise. If you are not following me, if your wickedness rises to the level that I must do something about it, I'm going to do it to you too, and he actually does to the Israelites. So, don't think that this is like some Israelite, you know, they're all righteous and something.

It is God, again and again, he's saying there is a wickedness that must be dealt with. And that's the third thing that you have to keep in mind, and that is that the Canaanites actually were a particularly wicked people in the ancient world. In fact, Genesis chapter 15, which is, three chapters or so after God deals with, or God promises to bless Abraham, he says you can't have that land.

And this is what he says, their sin hasn't reached its full measure. Which is to say that there was a level of sin that God said that actually they must be dealt with. Which is kind of odd to think about, but there's a level of sin that God says this cannot continue.

Specifically with the Canaanites, there's two sins, and this is what I want. I want you to hear this loudly, please. Open your ears for this, because this ties us back to Rahab.

There were two sins that the Canaanites were known for. One was cult prostitution, the other was child sacrifice. Keep that in mind.

Another thing that is important to keep in mind with the idea that the Canaanites were particularly wicked, was that punishment does change, sorry, the moral context of violence changes the idea of punishment. Okay, hopefully I can explain this. You all know that there's a moral difference between the police properly catching someone, say the shooter in Texas last week, and dealing with them.

As opposed to someone who has no criminal offense, who's been abducted. Like we know that there's a difference between a proper judgment and somebody who's just, you know, there's violence acted against them who's done nothing wrong. We know this kind of thing.

We deal with this in our own lives. And then the other thing I want you to keep in mind when we approach this is that this is set in this bigger, bigger story of the Bible, which is this story of the blessing of the nations. Abraham was blessed so that the whole nations would be blessed.

And actually the Canaanites are part of the nation. All right, I'm hoping that this setting some of this together is going to help you a little bit. So we come to Rahab.

Rahab, the one who's mentioned is actually one of the very mothers of Jesus. She does not belong to the people of Israel. So this is not reinforcing some sort of Israelite, they got it going.

And what we find very first, the very first thing that you're supposed to understand when Israel is going into the land of Canaan is not just that God is bringing about his divine judgment, but there is an amazing divine grace. Why do I say that? Well, actually, let me do this first. Rahab becomes the very embodiment of a faithful follower of Jesus.

And she's mentioned twice in the New Testament for her faith and then her faithful works. Hebrews says this, we heard it, by faith, Rahab, the prostitute, did not perish with those who were disobedient because she had given a friendly welcome to the spies. Rahab, and it specifically mentioned the prostitute.

James chapter two, verse 25, and in the same way was not also Rahab, the prostitute, justified by works when she received the messengers and sent them out by another way. The two times that Rahab is mentioned in the New Testament, it's not just mentioned that she's a Canaanite, but she's actually the very embodiment of the wickedness of the Canaanites. I told you there were two major sins the Canaanites were known for in the Old Testament, one cult prostitution, the other child sacrifice.

Those two things went hand in hand. I mean, this is way, you know, way before millennia, three millennia before any kind of contraception. Cult prostitution and child sacrifice went hand in hand because you would so often, prostitutes would so often become pregnant and you had to deal with that child.

She was the very embodiment of the wickedness that brought God's, not Israel's, divine judgment. She's it. She's the reason why God is doing this.

And yet the very first person there in Jericho, God says, I'm sparing you. I am going to spare you. And it's as if God wants to loudly say redemption's for everyone.

In so much, you could say the chief of sinners, at least the embodiment of what was so horrendous about the Canaanite wickedness. She is the faithful one that's mentioned in Hebrews and in James. Redemption is for all of you.

If you would just turn and actually, if you notice, read it later on her confession, in some ways it's pathetic. All it is, is like, yeah, we're all scared of you. Can I help you? I mean, it's not like, oh, let me recite the creeds and the catechisms.

Just turn from your ways. Turn and the Lord will welcome you with open arms. She says, hey, can I bring my family along with me? They're like, yes.

God is eager to extend grace, but he will not deal lightly with sin and wickedness. Let me tie this to Jesus and we'll finish up. What does this teach us about Jesus? Why was Jesus to be called Jesus? Because he would save their people from their sins.

God comes to us and he doesn't dismiss our sins. Actually, he says, I'm coming precisely because of it. I'm coming precisely because of it.

 

And he tells each one of us, you know, it's not because you're righteous. It's just because of my love. It's just because of my grace.

But repent today and turn. And even in some sort of feeble confession, I will gladly welcome you. I'll forgive you.

 

You'll be part of my people. And that is always God's message throughout all of scripture. That's his message.

I do not desire the death of the wicked. You know, Peter tells us that the Lord desires all people to come to repentance. It's consistent throughout the entire Bible.

Repent. Come to repentance. Coming.

I will come to judge as we say every week, the living and the dead. But the Lord does not desire the death of the wicked. He desires each one of us to turn to him.

Turn and he will welcome us with warm arms. I mean, there are so many ways in which these women set us up to receive Jesus in fresh and amazing ways. But the story of Rahab is a story of divine judgment.

But I'm telling you, Rahab being mentioned there is saying Jesus is coming with great mercy. He's coming with great mercy. If you look, let me end with this.

Look at your cover bulletin. Cover of your bulletin. Nora Gacy made this for us.

Nora, I love what you did. And why? Because the red cord is what your eyes are drawn to. You know, I mean, that's what you like.

I feel like that's almost all that my eyes are drawn to is this deep red cord. And so many now this is, of course, this is a Christian interpretation of this. But so many people have said it's red and it's crimson because it is the symbol of redemption.

It is pointing us forward to what Jesus would do on the cross. The one who doesn't deserve to die dies that we who deserve to die live. Even right then it's saying God does not desire the death of the wicked, the life of the wicked.

That is what Rahab teaches us about Jesus. Even in the context of what I'm telling you, you will wrestle with probably the rest of your life. This wild and unnerving story of the Canaanite conquest there.

There we see the beauty of Jesus. There we see the gift of God, the redemption of the world. Brothers and sisters, she will bear a son and you shall call his name Jesus.

For he will save his people from their sins. Let me pray. Lord, I pray that we here would be an honest people.

Honest with the difficulty of Holy Scripture and the stories you give us to understand yourself. I pray that we would seek to do the hard work of interpretation and understanding. That we would be eager to dismiss you.

God, I pray that we would even see that this is this text is given such a long narrative in such a hard book. It's drawing our attention to redemption even in the midst of this divine judgment. God, I pray that in looking at this we would focus our attention even on this scarlet cord that it might draw us and draw our hearts and our lives to the blood of Jesus.

Where we see the gift of God for the people of God. The life of the death of Christ, the life of those who were unrighteous was while we were still lost.  Amen